


old wounds

by multiverse (infrequency)



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Ambiguous Relationships, Angst, Implied Sexual Content, Lite Blood and Injury Mention, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:22:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26924290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infrequency/pseuds/multiverse
Summary: No matter how many pains Wonwoo takes to make sure he is as distant from the past as possible, it keeps inviting itself back.
Relationships: Jeon Wonwoo/Kwon Soonyoung | Hoshi
Comments: 16
Kudos: 59
Collections: South x Southwest: A Soonyoung/Wonwoo Prompt Fest





	old wounds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lovker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovker/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [soonwoo2020](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/soonwoo2020) collection. 



> i took some creative liberties with this, anon prompter, so uh. sorry? but i hope you enjoy all the same.
> 
> for rick, who soonwoos. xoxo

The last thing Wonwoo expects to see on a Saturday morning is someone knocked out on his apartment balcony, crimson contrast among the foliage. Least of all, one of Seoul’s finest, somehow sprawled out on the linoleum floor. He almost thinks it a hallucination from his shitty sleeping patterns and overactive imagination until he smells the blood, and he moves before fully processing a thought.

No matter how many pains Wonwoo takes to make sure he is as distant from the past as possible, it keeps inviting itself back. The voice in his head screams to walk away, but curiosity propels him forward. When the flat of Wonwoo’s palm with real flesh, the pained wail assures him that this isn’t another dream.

“That fucking _hurts_ ,” Hoshi whines.

Ah. Worse. It’s a fucking nightmare.

Wonwoo closes his own eyes, springing into action like a seasoned medic. There are no broken bones, broken skin on his arms or legs, just blood, whining, and tacky animal print that clashes with his apartment’s minimalist interior.

“That’s too bad, Hoshi-ssi,” Wonwoo says in a sickly sweet voice. The spandex on the right side of his body is pilled up and covered in grime, damp under Wonwoo’s fingertips. They make eye contact, and Wonwoo holds the gaze for a long moment before returning to his self-assigned task.

“It’s just _us_ , Wonwoo,” Hoshi says. He draws enough energy to manage a bloody smile. His teeth are pink. It’s not reassuring—old feelings of annoyance roll off of Wonwoo in waves at the attempt in cordiality. Head over heart; he shuts the companion emotions out.

Wonwoo just wants him bandaged and gone.

Hoshi lets out a yelp of pain when his hands graze his left abdomen. Wonwoo jabs a little harder when he glares up at him.

“I’m not the one who did this to you, dumbass.” Wonwoo’s hands grab Hoshi’s, pressing his palm against the wound.

He’s had his share of dealing with the city’s superpowered folk, and he had hoped that going dark would mean no interference. To everyone’s credit, Wonwoo’s had peaceful silence for the better part of a year. But of course, the biggest pain in his ass shows up bleeding in _his_ apartment.

“It’s healing. I’m _fine._ ”

Wonwoo rolls his eyes, adjusting his glasses with the back of his wrist. His knees crack when he stands, hands and sleep pants now stained with red and dirt.

“Well, if you’re _fine_ , then why did you come to _me_ , Soonyoung.”

Soonyoung takes it as a challenge to stand, but the headrush makes him stagger. His hands smack against the sliding glass door.

“‘m lightheaded,” he mumbles, and Wonwoo moves with him. He feels a little dizzy himself.

Stubbornness and stupidity, Soonyoung’s two qualities that him in Wonwoo’s thoughts more often than he’d like, no matter how much he’d like to disconnect entirely.

It’s an uncomfortable feeling of dejavu that he’s not willing to unpack so early in the morning.

“I didn’t know where else to go.”

“Well, you can’t stay _here_.”

His protest is short-lived; Soonyoung goes limp against the glass, and instinct takes over again. Even with distance and animosity, Wonwoo can’t act like the sight of Soonyoung on his floor doesn’t make his stomach turn.

He has a hand clasped against his side with his shiny lower lip pushed out. Soonyoung’s eyes go wide and innocent, begging for sympathy that he knows Wonwoo will give.

Annoyance has a shape, and it dresses like a tiger.

“God, you look like shit.”

Soonyoung musters enough energy to laugh as he stumbles alongside Wonwoo. The sound bounces off the tile in his bathroom. They've only been in the same space for just over 20 minutes, but there’s so much that’s tinted with difference that just a few months of separation makes. He doesn’t try to give the thought room to breathe; the faster Soonyoung gets bandaged up, the quicker he can leave. Sleep is calling out for Wonwoo, and he’d love to go back to bed sooner than later.

“I help you with this,” Wonwoo says, releasing him into the shower. It's more to himself than Soonyoung. “Then you get the fuck out.”

Soonyoung stares at him owlishly. Whatever protest that starts to kick up in his chest gets silenced with a surprised yelp at cold water hitting his body.

Leaned away from the stream, Soonyoung lets out a frustrated noise. “You’re gonna have to strip me,” he whines, pulling at the wet fabric. Wonwoo sticks his hand under the water. It’s warmer now. Drama queen.

“You can’t do it yourself?”

Soonyoung squawks, “You’re just gonna let me _die?_ ”

His eyes are heavy-lidded, laden with meaning. Wonwoo tries to pretend like he can’t read into what Soonyoung isn’t saying, but his eyes don’t lie.

“Fuck it, come here.”

Soonyoung lets out pained little sounds that Wonwoo soothes with his hands over the tender skin. As the water washes away the grit and grime, he can see where his body has healed itself over. The angry gash on his side still bleeds, and Soonyoung _hisses_ when the showerhead sprays directly at it.

He starts to lean forward in apology but corrects himself with a cough. There's so much uncertainty between them. It's all of Wonwoo's own doing. He passes off the showerhead.

“I’m gonna go grab some towels.”

When Wonwoo returns, Soonyoung slumps against the glass with his eyes squeezed shut.

“ _Hurts_ ,” he complains, and Wonwoo doesn't blink as he climbs back in and tends to his wound.

“Just relax, it'll be over soon.”

Old habits die hard; Wonwoo fights the reflex to do more, and only just wins against it. _Something_ radiates between them for a precious moment. Flashes of this same scene in a different context catch in reflections of light. Everything was different then, and he knows that Soonyoung can feel what he’s thinking.

“Wonwoo,” he says suddenly through a half-conscious drawl. The moment shatters. “I always thought _you’d_ be the one to try to kill me.”

In a way, Wonwoo thinks he has.

He sees the aftershocks of his departure still ride through the nation in waves, each villain and hero emulating his and _Hoshi_ ’s relationship. Or what they thought of their relationship. Many news anchors had speculated that one of them was simply a lover scorned.

They were only half-right.

He leaves Soonyoung in the guest room with a change of clothes. Tension and annoyance go to war in his chest, over and above the displeasure and the yearning. Barely an hour has passed, and the day feels like a cosmic joke. Wonwoo’s heart is the punchline.

A lover, once upon a time. But not scorned. Just prideful.

Wonwoo hasn’t seen Soonyoung in at least six months, and there were long, peaceful months after hitting reset. He’s got a job that he loves at a software company where no one knows who he is, other than Jeon Wonwoo, IT Manager. The volunteers at the animal shelter coo over him cooing over the animals, and in a few days, he’ll be able to bring his new cat home. His new apartment has no trace of most of the reminders of the past, with the mementos locked away.

No one in Wonwoo’s new life knows about his past life. His fingers trace the shadow of where a bracelet used to be, thinking of the months of power repression that’s gotten him here. He pulled away for his own safety.

Now, the untapped energy crackles under his fingertips, surging through his veins, and begs to be set free. He hasn’t felt the desire to tap into that part of himself in a long time, but Soonyoung’s reappearance in his life has brought it swirling back.

Caffeine in his system now, Wonwoo enters the bedroom with his walls up, but the sight of Soonyoung there almost knocks them down. Almost.

Soonyoung pushes up on his elbows to a half-sitting position. He looks soft and small in Wonwoo’s clothes, an oversized black tee peeking out from under the covers, a shock of pink hair against the all black.

Soonyoung breaks the silence. “Normal looks good on you.”

“Yeah, well,” Wonwoo starts, disjointed and nervous. Why does he feel so fucking anxious around Soonyoung? “ _You_ look fucked up.”

He’s not lying. A purple bruise shades the side of Soonyoung’s jawline, a silver scar across his nose, and his lip is still moist with blood. The most apparent injury aside, Wonwoo’s never seen anyone look so….blended, but knows that he will heal. The regeneration process is one he knows all too well.

“I usually heal faster,” he says with a half shrug, visibly biting back the soreness. “But, you know this.”

“What even happened?”

Soonyoung _sighs_ at him, but he looks at Wonwoo with something like trepidation. It disappears before he can process it. “Um. You can _look_ if you want.”

That makes Wonwoo startle, blinking twice before taking his glasses off. “Um,” he says. “Okay.” It’s been months since he’s used his abilities, but he shakes the dirt off and steps in close.

Wonwoo’s fingertips graze the end of the bed. He lets the manic energy loose to flow through his body with a deep breath, sparks dancing at his fingertips, and jolting towards Soonyoung.

Their hands touch.

The dam holding his abilities back breaks, energy surging forward.

_Hoshi’s teeth are bared, glinting from behind his ripped mask. The split lip stings as he laughs, pulling his arm before he swings out again._

The memory feels too controlled. Wonwoo’s fingers grip tighter, and he burrows deeper.

_The figure doesn’t have a face, taking a barely humanoid shape._

_“Show yourself, coward!”_

_A cruel, crackling rip of lightning surges through him, a laugh echoing in his mind._

_“You know what I am.”_

Wonwoo keeps pushing, digging into the cogs of Soonyoung’s mind. He picks up on flashes, but the little fissures lead to dead ends.

He sees a fight, rippling at the edges like a half-baked memory, not uncommon for someone with a head injury. He hears screaming. He sees a fearful Soonyoung scaling a building, which makes him feel doused in ice water.

A stabbing pain shoots through Wonwoo as he yanks himself away. His arms wrap around his middle instinctively, curled in on himself for protection. With steady breaths, he leans back up to push his glasses back on.

“That _hurt_ , but gave me absolutely nothing.”

Wonwoo rolls his eyes and throws the blanket toward Soonyoung, who grabs it out of the air with ease. He rubs his face in it, groaning about migraines.

“Did you see who did this to you?” Wonwoo climbs onto the edge of the bed, sitting opposite Soonyoung at the baseboard.

Soonyoung shrugs, but his eyes don’t quite meet Wonwoo’s. A lit match of distrust flickers through him.

“ _Helpful_.”

“Sorry, next time I’ll just ask them,” Soonyoung spits out, suddenly defensive. “Excuse me, _ahjussi_? Before you kick my ass, can you tell me what your name is? Thanks.”

Wonwoo’s face goes blank, but he stares at Soonyoung with a well-trained sharpness. “Soonyoung, I’m not even a part of _that_ world anymore, so if you’re fucking with me–”

His eyes go wide with realization. “Oh, wow, you’re...really not anymore, are you?”

Wonwoo chews the inside of his cheek but nods, curt. Soonyoung seems to take everything in for the first time, eyes falling onto the desk across from the bed. Remembering the framed photo that sits there makes something like embarrassment pick away at Wonwoo’s mind.

“Thank you,” he says, finally, the most subdued he’s seen him possibly ever.

“I didn’t think you’d let me in, but I had nowhere else to go,” Soonyoung admits in a quiet voice.

“Technically,” Wonwoo replies, “I didn’t let you in.”

Soonyoung grins, lopsided and warm, reaching out for Wonwoo’s hand. He takes it for the second time, and the breath gets stolen from his lungs. Soonyoung always did think too damn loud, and so much. Wonwoo nearly chokes on the words that fly toward him, staring at their joined hands in contemplation.

“Have you been _looking_ for me?”

Wonwoo keeps his eyes to where their fingers lace together. The weight of Soonyoung’s gaze is too much right now, and the thought of the answer in his mind makes Wonwoo shiver.

“How long have you been tracking me?”

Chancing a glance, he watches Soonyoung’s face drop. The silence that stretches out between them is a weight on Wonwoo’s chest. There are no right answers for why, at least not one that doesn’t make Soonyoung seem _obsessive_. Worst of all, Wonwoo is unsure that he’ll be unable to find it unflattering.

Soonyoung’s lips are dry and cracked when he raises their joined hands to his mouth; the wet on his split lip sticky against the warm skin of his hand.

“Wonwoo,” he says, voice jagged and raw. “I missed you.”

Wonwoo lets out a soft groan.

The separation was a mutual understanding, codependency turned to violence, turned into mutual loathing. Head over heart, until heart began to carry too much.

For the first time in a long time, he lets himself think about the past in a different light. The glimpses of Soonyoung’s thoughts had reminded him of a less hectic time. He thinks about the trysts with backs scratched against brick walls against hands and teeth and knees and bodies moving as one in the sheets. He remembers the version of Jeon Wonwoo that _loved_ Kwon Soonyoung until he didn't anymore. Cruelty over kindness expelled through anger and violence and “Wonwoo-yah, _please,_ ” and fists against fists, spandex, and leveled neighborhoods.

Soonyoung has seen his worst and his most violent, seen the way he creates destruction. But he’s missed that tenderness. The time lost between them fall away, and the last of his walls do, too.

Wonwoo’s greatest power has always been that he was Soonyoung’s greatest weakness. Soonyoung's greatest power is that Wonwoo will always choose heart over head when it comes to him, every time.

He gasps out in surprise when Wonwoo is the one that brings their mouths together, licking in with urgency, like he's craved it. And maybe, Wonwoo thinks, hands cupping the sides of Soonyoung’s face to drink him in, he has. Champagne bubble giddiness and the sparks under his skin fill a void he didn’t know existed. Wonwoo tastes blood and tastes copper and salt and grit under his teeth, but he pushes for more, more.

One last time, he digs through Soonyoung’s mind for the truth. Head over heart. He sees the same scene. The vision ripples at the edges again, and Wonwoo thinks nothing of it.

“I got you.”

Wonwoo seals the promises between them, saying more than he means with gentle fingertips gliding under his shirt. He’s careful not to touch the gash in his side, finding a home at Soonyoung’s hips as he pulls him in. He wishes that his hands were good for something other than destruction.

Not for the first time, Soonyoung begs to be undone.

He gives in.

His head tells him between breaths that Soonyoung’s offering feels too convenient. Wonwoo’s heart tells him to let it go.

It’s not a surprise when he opens his eyes after a peaceful, dreamless sleep, and Soonyoung is gone. Wonwoo is even less surprised to find the few relics of the past missing in his absence; the promises those things held have long since expired.

Heart over head, once again, he realizes that sometimes the instinct to be cruel is better than being kind.

Electricity dancing on his skin, the letter Soonyoung left behind turns to ash in Wonwoo’s hands.

**Author's Note:**

>   
> [dw](https://infrequencies.dreamwidth.org/) || [cc](curiouscat.qa/infrequenced)  
> 


End file.
